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A Memoir of 

Richard Hodgson 

i 855- 1905 

By MA. DeW. H. 



Read at the 

Annual Meeting of the Tavern Club 

6 May 1 906 



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Richard Hodgson 

On the twentieth of December, 1905, 
there died in the over-active exercise of 
his body one whose life was preemi- 
nently an exercise of the spirit. Indeed, 
it was as an explorer of the spiritual 
realm, an adventurer beyond the bourne 
from which he believed the return of 
travelers could be proved and guided, 
that he was chiefly known to the world 
at large. Before recalling the distinctive 
qualities of his private life as we knew 
it, let us look for a moment at the main 
facts of what may be called his public 
career. 

Richard Hodgson was born in Mel- 
bourne, Australia, in i855. In due time 
he graduated and took a law course at 



Melbourne University. This was followed 
by study and graduation at the English 
Cambridge, where he devoted himself 
especially to the mental and moral 
sciences. After six months more of study 
at the University of Jena, he found him- 
self, 1882-83, delivering University Ex- 
tension lectures in the north of England. 
In 1 884-85 he served as lecturer at Cam- 
bridge on the philosophy of Herbert 
Spencer. From 1882 to 1887 he was 
active in the investigations of the Eng- 
lish Society for Psychical Research. One 
of his most important and conspicuous 
pieces of work in this period was the 
exposure of Madame Blavatsky, for the 
accomplishment of which he spent some 
months in India. Another was the pene- 
trating study of S. J. Davey's * ' Imitations 



by Conjuring of Phenomena sometimes 
attributed to Spirit Agency." In 1887 he 
came to Boston as secretary of the Ameri- 
can branch of the Society for Psychical 
Research. 

The results of his whole-hearted de- 
votion to this task may be seen in the 
Reports of the Society, and in what he 
did towards completing the monumental 
work on "Human Personality and its 
Survival of Bodily Death" by his friend 
F. W. H. Myers. Through the last years 
of his life he was peculiarly identified 
with the trance sittings of Mrs. Piper and 
the communications from the spirit- 
groups of which he recognized "Phi- 
nuit" and "Imperator" as the central 
figures. Though finally surrendering his 
own life to the direction of ' ' Imperator," 



he sought to retain in his work of inter- 
pretation for others the attitude of the 
investigator insisting upon the best of 
evidence. It was his unflagging desire to 
accumulate a mass of evidence sufficient 
to form a reasonable hypothesis regard- 
ing the "spirit world." 

There is no lack of pathos, from one 
point of view, in his having dropped this 
work uiifinished. From another there 
is the satisfaction of his having passed 
quickly, as he wished to pass, from the 
present to the future life. More than one 
of his friends recall the eagerness with 
which he said only last summer, "I can 
hardly wait to die." A keen intellectual 
curiosity regarding what awaited him 
was his own chief concern about death. 
Then came that which he had desired; 



and neither the doubters nor his fellow- 
believers could wholly grudge him the 
opportunity to carry forward — as he 
would have said — "on the other side" 
the work to which he gave his life on 
earth. With a swift passage from the 
known to the unknown sphere, the visi- 
ble life among us came to an end. 

To those who knew him in private his 
utter confidence in the work was one of 
its highest justifications. To hear him 
talk of that "other side" as if it were lit- 
erally a room separated from the house 
of life only by walls and doors of glass, 
to see him year in and year out devoting 
to an idea intellectual and moral powers 
which might well have won him many 
of the rewards which men prize most, 
— this was to realize in a measure the 



spirit which has animated the idealists 
of every age, the spirit through which a 
man saves his life by losing it. 

The general and the personal signifi- 
cance of his work were so inextricably 
twined together that it is hard to discuss 
it at all without seeming to invade the 
inmost sanctities. Yet in this company 
it is no sacrilege to quote from a private 
letter of 190 1 a passage which reveals at 
once the intense conviction of Richard 
Hodgson's belief and the pure spiritual 
faith of which it was the embodiment : 
"I went through toils and turmoils and 
perplexities in '97 and '98 about the sig- 
nificance of this whole Imperator re- 
gime, but I have seemed to get on a rock 
after that, — I seem to understand clearly 
the reasons for incoherence and obscur- 



ity, etc., and I think that if for the rest 
of my life from now I should never see 
another trance or have another word 
from Imperator or his group, it would 
make no difference to my knowledge that 
all is well, that Imperator, etc., are all 
they claim to be and are indeed messen- 
gers that we may call divine. Be of good 
courage whatever happens, and pray 
continually, and let peace come into your 
soul. Why should you be distraught and 
worried? Everything, absolutely every- 
thing, — from a spot of ink to all the 
stars, — every faintest thought we think 
of to the contemplation of the highest 
intelligence in the cosmos, are all in and 
part of the infinite Goodness . Rest in that 
Divine Love. All your trials are known 
better than you know them yourself. Do 



you think it is an idle word that the hairs 
of our heads are numbered? Have no dis- 
may. Fear nothing and trust in God." 

His friends and brothers here — for 
surely friendship and brotherhood were 
almost indistinguishable in his relations 
with us — care especially to remember 
one thing — that this idealist did not de- 
tach himself from the most earth-bound 
of us all. Though so much of his com- 
merce was with the unseen, his feet kept 
step with ours on solid earth. In the field 
of mental activities, there was no one 
better qualified to discuss the freshest 
topics of physical science, the events and 
tendencies in the world of affairs, and 
their deeper significances. There was no 
one here to whom the pleased discov- 
erer of a new minor poet — since the 



major phenomenon is so rare — could 
come with such conviction that his dis- 
covery had been anticipated. Indeed it 
was no unusual thing to have Dick quote 
you off-hand the new singer's best 
verses, with all the fervor and under- 
standing which made him the favorite 
interpreter of certain of our own poets. 
One cannot forget how he entered into 
the reading of other men's verses. No 
matter if there were twenty valentines or 
prize songs to be read in a single even- 
ing, every one of them rang out in his 
loyal voice as heartily as if Dick himself 
were the author, bent upon bringing 
forth every particle of meaning or wit 
the lines might contain. His intimate 
association with the more serious muse 
will be a recurring remembrance to 



most of us, when Christmas and New 
Year come round without the card 
which brought us his poetic greeting, 
in which an old or a new poet seemed 
merely the mouthpiece of the sender's 
own thought. 

Nor was this community of interest 
restricted by any means to the things of 
the mind. The healthy Anglo-Saxon de- 
votion to every exhibition of physical 
prowess was conspicuously character- 
istic of this child of the spirit. The pro- 
fessional ball game, the college boat race 
and foot-ball battle excited his keenest 
interest ; and it was like him to double 
his enjoyment in these sports by the 
companionship of one or more of us. 
The cheery call for volunteers for the 
2 . 20 boat must remain one of the bright- 



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est memories of our summer lunch- 
table, not only for those who used to 
join the almost daily expeditions to Nan- 
tasket, and huddled into their clothes 
while Dick's head was still a mere speck 
amongst the ocean steamers and harbor 
islands, but for all whose paths led in- 
land or to other shores. In the pool- 
room, its dominating figure was for the 
tyro the most patient and encouraging 
of teachers, for the expert the most for- 
midable of rivals, for the box the most 
active inciter of tickets. Is it — by the 
way — a mere coincidence that the par- 
rot, since losing his most devoted friend 
and champion, has stood in less need of 
a defender than ever before? In the 
squash-court Dick was the best and gen- 
tlest of antagonists in victory or defeat. 



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From the gallery above it his initial 
inquiry, " Score ?" his rallying shouts — 
"two-yard-line," "anybody's game" — 
put spirit into the flagging player, and 
made him happily conscious of a gallery 
to which it was no shame to play. Down- 
stairs by the fire-place and at the table 
above, it was generally Dick who first 
taught the new member to know him- 
self here by his Christian name, and to 
feel that gray hairs and youth might after 
all be contemporaries. 

Just because he was the contempo- 
rary of all, the man between whom and 
the rest of us the barriers were the few- 
est and the lowest, he typified, perhaps 
more than any individual member of 
the club, the spirit of the Tavern. The 
last words that certain of us heard him 



speak are a memorable illustration of his 
unique and beautiful place among us. 
Eight or ten men were gathered in the 
lower room — one defending an unpop- 
ular cause, which the others were hotly 
denouncing. The debate was growing ac- 
rimonious. Down from luncheon came 
Dick. "Go for the scoundrel," he thun- 
dered from the stairs. "Don't give him 
a chance to speak; down with him! 
Don't let him be heard!" The genial 
shout, with its animating love of fair 
play as well as of peace, drew a laugh 
and a response. "How can anybody be 
heard when you 're in the room, Dick?" 
There was another laugh — and the un- 
pleasantness was past. A few moments 
later Dick left the club. That evening his 
lifeless body was carried upstairs. 



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A purity of nature which leaves his 
friends unable, even should they try, to 
recall a single taint of coarseness in his 
word or thought; a sincerity like that of 
a true-hearted boy; an unselfishness and 
absence of egotism which made our con- 
cerns far more often than his the topics 
of our personal intercourse; a self-re- 
spect which included in its operations a 
body as wholesome as the air and sea he 
loved; — these must surely be remem- 
bered in any enumeration of the quali- 
ties which made his personality so rare 
a blending of the spirit and the flesh. 
Who better than our well-loved friend 
can remain for us the interpretation and 
type of this blending? What man of us 
has lived in the flesh a life so illuminated 
and controlled by the spirit that the 



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transition from the seen to the unseen 
could have seemed so short a journey 
as for him? One whose spirit, like our 
friend's, was clothed with the whole 
armor of faith and courage has told what 
it is for such a man to die: "In the hot- 
fit of life, a-tiptoe on the highest point 
of being, he passes at a bound on to the 
other side. The noise of the mallet and 
chisel is scarcely quenched, the trum- 
pets are hardly done blowing, when, 
trailing with him clouds of glory, this 
happy-starred, full-blooded spirit shoots 
into the spiritual land."* 

It is much to have left behind one 
what Richard Hodgson has left to us, — 
a memory the sweetest, the purest, the 
best^beloved. When his spirit had gone 

*R. L. Stevenson, conclusion of Aes Triplex. 



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on its final quest that memory in all its 
freshness remained to hallow the room 
in which he shared so many of our de- 
lights. There it brought together an un- 
exampled assemblage of the friends of 
him who had come to us a stranger. For 
his sake the place which was so truly 
his home must be, to us who like to call 
ourselves his family, more than ever 
unlike all other places. For his sake we 
shall sing without sorrow, 

Meum est propositum in Taberna mori, — 

for we shall sing it, remembering what 
it is both to live and to die here, and 
rejoicing always in the sense of his con- 
tinuing fellowship. 






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